I blocked your car with our car while you were loading groceries. You responded with compassion. You RAN and opened the door to VEG as I rushed holding my baby girl in her carrier.

To the team at VEG who responded like it was their own beloved family member, I hate that the words thank you don't feel like they begin to cover the gratitude I am experiencing in my heart.

You would not believe the year I've had, even if I told you. You would not believe how the woman running to open the door for me and the team at VEG running to aid some person's dying pet - has given me just enough to keep moving forward.

I thank you all, with my deepest sincerity.

Anyone else hear an alarm going off near west/ candler area? Any idea what it is ?

Maybe 2 minutes ago I heard a siren I’ve never heard before (more like a tornado siren than a fire/police/ambulance) and then an announcement, I couldn’t tell if it was prerecorded or someone speaking but it sounded like the former. It sounded like it was coming from Swannanoa River Rd, near where it meets Glendale, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Did anyone hear this more clearly & could make out what the announcement was?

About the boys: A kind soul here in AVL is fostering two young (2YO) male cats, Bear and Ash, who belonged to a friend of hers who was deported. She has gone to great pains to find them a good home, has brought them to the vet (clean bill of health), and has reached out far and wide to find them a good place to land.

What is needed: She requires that they be kept indoors for their safety and that they go home together, given how bonded they are (and all that they’ve been through already). I can personally attest to the fact that two is better than one. (I’m on 4!) She will want to speak to a prospective adopter to ensure they are a good fit.

More info from foster mama herself: Phone interview followed by in-home visit from me for prospective local adopters, video interview/home tour for long distance. Message me here or email ashleycapps12@gmail.com. Thank you in advance to anyone willing to help me share their story. This post is also shareable from my Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashley.capps.7370/posts/pfbid02zUcW8a2N6vEZHSr9PtznJE7Z3QrpjZY3of6c4rDkW7fY8QHr3Y6QtsQ3fMTYbwXrl
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd2oDfKHAW3/?img_index=

In the meantime, she is fostering them solo with her own kitties, all of whom the boys get along with, and giving them as much attention as she possibly can. She has lots of video and photos to show you just how good these babies are. But these boys deserve a forever home that won’t be turned upside down again.

If you are interested please contact her: ashleycapps12@gmail.com.

P.S. What I can do for the right adopter: I’m so invested in these guys that I would be more than happy to assist in transport or a starter package of food/toys.

Hey, Asheville Reddit Community,

I am a newly recovered addict who has been in the process of rebuilding my life this entire year and am finally getting to a point where having enough saved where looking for a vehicle is realistic. I have been watching the usual, Marketplace and Craigslist, and figured I would put a post on here as well. Any help and suggestions/ideas would be very appreciated!! As of right now I have about $2,000 but work full time so another paycheck will be added to the money pile in two weeks or so. Really really hoping something comes up so I can FINALLY put the bus system behind me. fingers crossed Thanks much.

Income tax cap: Lowers the existing cap from 7 to 3.5 percent

• It is not a tax cut. It applies to both the corporate and personal rate. Both rates are already scheduled to be below 3.5 percent next year.
• The NC General Assembly has been cutting income taxes for 13 years. This has disproportionately benefitted large corporations and those with very high incomes.
• State revenue is falling as our population and costs grow. This is unsustainable and has led to underfunding of services and programs, and local governments paying for what are supposed to be state costs.
• Income tax cuts lead to increases in fees and sales taxes, and cuts to vital public services.
• The income tax amendment would lock us into this situation effectively permanently, so future lawmakers hands will be tied.
• NC has never had a rate this low, and it will be locked into the constitution. This leaves the state unprepared for economic downturns and unforeseen circumstances like natural disasters.

Property Tax Levy Limit: Caps what local governments can collect, NOT your bill

• It is not a cap on an individual’s property tax bill. It is a cap on the total revenue a local government can collect in property taxes.
• State lawmakers already have the power to set a levy limit, so the constitutional amendment is not necessary.
• Increasingly, local governments have been taking on costs that are supposed to be covered by the state and/or federal government. This amendment is likely to lead to service cuts as local governments struggle with state and local revenue constraints.
• It does not address housing unaffordability and would disproportionately benefit large corporate landowners like tech companies and corporate landlords.
• What the limit would be and how it would be derived is not public, so there is little recourse or accountability.

Before voting, consider the impact these amendments will have on your community:

• Who would benefit from these changes and who would be negatively impacted?
• What would these amendments mean for the funding of quality of life services my family and community rely on, like emergency services, community centers, libraries, public schools, water and sanitation…?
• How would these revenue constraints impact the ability of the state and local governments to provide services for a growing or aging population and respond to natural disasters or other unforeseen circumstances in the future, especially as costs rise?
• What are specific projects prioritized by our community that are most at risk for delay or cancellation if state funding is uncertain and local government cannot collect sufficient revenue from property taxes to supplement decreases in state investment? 
• How have state and federal funding levels changed over the last 5-10 years? What state funding responsibilities has my local government taken on over that same period?
• What specific funding shortfalls are we experiencing now, including staffing shortages, school closures, or services interruptions?
• What are the other methods of generating revenue if income tax and property tax revenue is constrained? Will our locality be forced to rely more on unpopular fees?

Learn More From These Non-Partisan Resources:

• https://ncvoteagainst.org
•  https://ncvoteagainst.org/faq
• https://ncbudget.org/amendments/
• https://nchousing.org/no-real-relief-levy-limit-will-reduce-county-budgets-by-hundreds-of-millions-without-helping-homeowners/

Constitutional amendment to require

all voters, not just those presenting to

vote in person, to present photo

identification before voting.

Vote AGAINST this. This will disenfranchise a lot of people and take away their CAPACITY to vote. And it’s not necessary because when you get an ID/DL you have to provide citizenship proof. The government knows who is a citizen and who isn’t as they can easily send the military registration card or request to register to anyone who turns 18. They know. And the government wants to force us to get more identifications, generate more income for them to give tax breaks to the rich, to use for war, to take voting rights, to make it more difficult. DO NOT fall for it. NO ONE can vote but citizens. If you have ever acquired a DL/ID then you know the DMV signs you up for voting IF and ONLY IF you are an American Citizen for which you MUST PROVIDE CITIZENSHIP proof. Do not fall for it.

“Fresh patriots to the front” Cantwell wants you to believe he just went to the Capitol to take pictures on J6, and the videos we all saw “were taken out of context.”

Hi. I was in Asheville this weekend, mostly hitting galleries. Somewhere along the way, my brand new Maui Jim prescription sunglasses fell out of my coat pocket. I'll pay for shipping and a $100 reward to the person who gets them to me. I can send a pic of the glasses, but they had a blue mirror on the lense. Thanks.

Hey r/Asheville.

Soooooo… I was getting ready to early vote and realized I didn’t know much about the candidates beyond their ads and campaign websites.

When you look at those, everyone’s for affordable housing, responsible spending, and listening to the community. Great. We have achieved agreement on the campaign website….

But what did they actually vote for? What happened afterward? Did the projects they funded go anywhere?

So I made this: By the Record.

I’d been thinking about this since an event a couple weeks ago where Esther Manheimer and Kim Roney did a 2 hour Q&A with members of the community.

I asked about a dashboard for tracking projects, progress, funding, etc. after they’re announced. Kim mentioned plans to address that…but tbh, we have a lot of the data publicly available, so I decided to take a stab at organizing it myself.

There’s a ton of it. And it’s REALLY hard to read. You open a PDF, it points you to meeting minutes, the minutes point to another document, and by then you’ve forgotten what you were looking for bc it’s lost amongst a sea of 14 tabs of 50+ page Google docs

I wanted plain English summaries with links back to the source so you can check for yourself.

A couple things I learned while building it:

- Council approved shifting $19.2 million into single-family home repairs: $9.2M from new multifamily housing and $10M from infrastructure. That took the home-repair allocation from $3M to $22.2M. Getting people back into their homes is urgent, but I hadn’t realized the money came out of those other buckets. I’d like to understand what that means for the housing and infrastructure work it was originally meant for. (See the decision + source records)
- The new $54.9 million, four-year bus operating contract has penalties for buses leaving early and complaints not answered within 24 hours. Cool. Now I want to know if those standards are being met and whether the penalties are actually being enforced. (See the decision + source records)

What’s on the site:

- Asheville trends: housing costs, jobs, population, and city spending, with sources
- Candidates: statements, time in office, and voting records
- Projects: funding, contracts, timelines, what’s done and what’s still pending
- Meetings: plain English summaries linked to the original records and video, with timestamps
- Weekly catch-up and RSS: for those of us who want to know what happened but don’t always have 3 hours to go to a city council meeting

Next I want to add personal watchlists, so you can follow a road project near your house, a development down the street, or a recovery project you care about & and get a heads-up when something changes vs checking a procurement page every week.

Mostly I want it to be easier to vote with some real background, see where public money goes, and see whether the people we elect are getting shit done. I’m also trying to be careful about what the records can and can’t tell you. E.g., approving money isn’t the same as finishing a project…a citywide trend doesn’t mean one council member caused it.

To be clear, I’m just a local resident. This isn’t affiliated with the City or any campaign. It’s a work in progress and the records are pulled in automatically, so there will be gaps and mistakes.

I’d really like to hear what’s useful, what’s confusing, and what’s missing.

Question for you: if you could put one Asheville project or issue on a watchlist, what would it be? And what’s the question about it you can never get a straight answer to?

Corrections: [corrections@bytherecord.com](mailto:corrections@bytherecord.com)
Everything else: [hello@bytherecord.com](mailto:hello@bytherecord.com)

And if you’re a coder, data person, someone tuned in to local politics, or someone who enjoys digging through public records, I’d love to hear from you! 👋

I have an NC ID that is almost 2 years expired, pretty sure that I can't use that at the polls. I've been looking it up, and learned there's a "no fee ID card" I can get from the DMV. I am asking this in good faith. What steps do I take to be able to vote in this election?

Huge line at the box office. Hope everyone gets tickets!

Anybody up on the parkway tonight see those weird and random fires, like three in a row, somewhat spaced out? Not controlled burns, looked like someone started them! People pulled off on the side of the road, cop car had pulled a car over in one of the lots, and we saw this group of teenagers on bikes nearby. Bunch of fire trucks passed us on our way down. Looking for info.

Excellent reporting from Laura Hackett with BPR! Some selected excerpts and quotes:

“It's time for change,” Roney told BPR in an Oct. 7 interview, when asked about her decision to run for mayor again. “And I feel honored to hold the container for hope.”

“When we don’t include the public, when we do the work behind the scenes, we end up with a lot of really expensive damage control instead,” she told BPR. “So, we can either do the people’s work in public and spend time in front and throughout and get better wins or we can do the public outrage at the end.”

One of the core critiques Roney has seen from her opponent, Manheimer, is whether she can build a large enough coalition to enact her policies. At a Oct. 6 debate held by WLOS, Manheimer questioned her ability to do so.

“You’ve got to have four votes to support any one funding opportunity. And so, if you can't build that collaboration, if you can't convince your partners to join you in your effort, then you're just going to be a lone vote shouting in the wind, and that is not an effective way to govern,” Manheimer said.

During her interview with BPR, Roney disputed the characterization that she stands alone.

“Council votes together often and it doesn’t get a lot of attention. But if I am appearing alone on City Council, I am not alone in community,” she told BPR. “And I’m rarely alone on Council.”

She pointed to the city’s decision to end its Flock license plate camera contract as an example of coalition building. In August, Roney made the motion to terminate the contract, and it passed 5-2, with Manheimer among those voting yes.

“People across Western North Carolina, it’s non-partisan, are pushing back against Flock and surveillance cameras,” Roney said. “So what it took is educating the public and showing a path to how we unplug from Flock.”

In her rematch against Manheimer, Roney said door knocking is a key part of her strategy. Last election, she knocked on about 6,000 doors. This time around, she said she has surpassed 10,000, with the help of campaign volunteers.

“At minimum, we're having conversations with our neighbors, deepening relationships, changing hearts and minds and knowing each other better. And so that's already a win,” she said.

In mayoral rematch, Kim Roney attempts to unseat Esther Manheimer, one door knock at a time

She’s been hanging around for like a week, does she belong to someone?? She seems very scared. She’s ran on down the road towards Smokey Park.

Having a hard time finding a solid answer and thought someone here might know more. If someone’s last day of post release supervision was 10/18, is there any way to have voter rights restored and voter registration done on time to vote in the midterms?

Gorgeous sunny day! Don't miss the new bird house! It matches the warden's office. Park Warden Paul is a very skilled carpenter.